The present dissertation postulates the dead body as a cultural signifier in which it is possible to read social, political, ethical, and aesthetic meanings and practices during the first half of twentieth century Latin America. Drawing from a close examination…

A goal of fisheries management is to predict the probability of successful
establishment of invasive fish species. To address this goal, species distribution models
are used to project species distribution under different climate-change scenarios. In this
study, the geographic distribution…

Protein domain prediction is a key step in characterizing protein structure, function, and evolution. However, the genome of Plasmodium falciparum, the causative agent of malignant malaria, remains poorly-annotated using standard approaches to domain prediction. We identified several general problems with…

In numerous animal groups, individuals within the group often wish to impose
their preferences and guide the group in a certain direction. Conflicting preferences are
common in these situations and, in order to maintain group cohesion, collective decisionmaking
needs to…

Over the past several decades, abundant research has investigated the onset of gender role development in early childhood, suggesting that children as young as 3 possess substantial awareness of gender stereotypes and, by age 5, strong beliefs about the need…

The analysis of noisy consensus dynamics in networks is of great interest to both
advance the fundamental understanding of multi-agent systems in nature as well as
create robust decentralized engineering systems. We develop a protocol that heuristically attempts to optimize…

It is estimated that 450 million people worldwide suffer from mental and behavioral disorders.
As 75% of mental disorders onset prior to the age of 24, the college years are a particularly
critical window when mental health can be promoted…

In the United States, healthcare-associated infections are a huge source of medical and
economic burden. Annually, there are 1.7 million cases of healthcare-associated infection in
U.S. hospitals, which cause an estimated 98,987 deaths. Direct medical cost is also massive,
estimated…

Howler monkeys (Alouatta sp.) use loud call vocalizations for both intra-group
and intergroup communication (Oliveira & Ades, 2004; Whitehead, 1989; da Cunha
& Byrne, 2006; Holzmann, 2012). While much of the literature focuses on the effect
of loud call vocalizations…

In polyandrous species, sexual selection acts both before (precopulatory) and after
(postcopulatory) mating on traits that are important for reproductive success. Precopulatory traits
are important for mate acquisition and include weapons and ornaments. Postcopulatory traits
include components of sperm quantity…